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Page 1: 10 reasons to become a digital nomad today

The academy fordigital design nomads

10 reasons to become a digital nomad today

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We are digital design nomads and believe that a diverse

lifestyle with rich experiences can nurture the soul and

spark brilliance. We despise routines, they kill curiosity,

make days blend into each other and destroy creative

minds. Start Loaded gives you the tools to be part of a

lifestyle revolution where work and travel come together

in harmony. A lifestyle that challenges convention.

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Contents

See the worldImprove your lifestyleBecome more productiveCreate a mouthwatering portfolioBreak away from the rat raceWith change comes opportunityFinding your elementMeet inspiring specimensCreativity and inspirationHelp othersKnowledge and growth

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1See the world

This is one of the main reasons to become a digital design nomad. Seeing the world will

open your eyes to cultural diversity, get you closer to adventure, allow you to embrace new hobbies depending on your location and give you the freedom to choose your schedule.

As a digital design nomad, you can go anywhere you please. It’s really that simple. If you think you like the idea of living in a tree house in Costa Rica because you think you like the smell of a cassia tree in the morning. Guess what? You can do it!

“If you don’t feel like staying, it’s as easy as packing a few dirty socks and relocating”

Working on the road puts an incredible spin on the way you travel. You don’t have a time limit, you’re not rushing to see 5 locations on your 5 day holiday. With this lifestyle you can soak up as much as you want from a location. Maybe you fall in love with a place and end up staying there for years or the rest of your life.

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2Improve your lifestyle

If you live like a digital design nomad, you’ll be lucky to experience a life full of flavor.

Freedom of location, material objects and a fixed schedule are just some of the perks of this life. You can also choose what clients you want to work with and the type of work that truly matters to you. A healthy work-life balance with a non-restrictive schedule can allow you to design a bespoke lifestyle, no more of that boring 9-5.

As you might have noticed, we’re not very fond of routines at Start Loaded. The problem with a routine is that it quickly sets you in to a default mode, making life boring and senseless. It takes out the adventure in life and the excitement to do new things can quickly fade away. The excitement of being in new place fuels curiosity and creativity. All of a sudden learning how to train a racing pigeon in China becomes an activity that one must indulge in.

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Some call it post-materialism, this theory explains it as “the transformation of individual values from materialist, physical and economic to new individual values of autonomy and self-expression” Wikipedia.

With this lifestyle it’s easier to ditch material objects that seem unnecessary and start to value other aspects of life. All of a sudden things seem to be less important, the craving of wanting more is soon eradicated (mainly due to the fact that your 55 litre bag will inevitably

explode if one more souvenir is purchased.) Material objects are soon replaced by experiences.

Traveling has many important psychological effects, not all of them are good, but here we’ll focus on the bright side of things. “What a lot of psychological research has shown now is that the ability to engage with people from different backgrounds than yourself, and the ability to get out of your own

“A healthy work-life balance with a non-restrictive schedule can allow you to design a bespoke lifestyle”

social comfort zone, is helping you to build a strong and acculturated sense of your own self,” says Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, an associate professor of education and psychology at the University of southern California.

Traveling will allow you to live closer to nature and enjoying new activities. Sticking in front of a black box to watch the latest episode of “Have I met your small pet Bobby” seems a bit pointless when you’re camping on the edge of a cliff.

It’s easier to become a surfer if you live in a surf town, or go skiing on your free time if you can live on a mountain, being able to choose your location can allow you to engage in amazing new hobbies.

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3Become more productive

What would you do to work anywhere, explore the world, try out new

hobbies, challenge yourself every day, meet inspiring people and enjoy freedom whilst developing your career? My answer is: anything except wrestling a watermelon in a public space.

Once you’ve tasted life as a digital design nomad, it’s going to be hard to go back to commuting for hours in a metal box, next to thousands of other metal boxes to later position yourself in cubicle the size of a public toilet. And if this means working extra hours, putting more effort in to your projects, perfecting your trade and seeking out tools and resources to commit to this lifestyle, so be it.

Productivity isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you’re traveling around the world. It’s hard to stay focused when so much is happening around you, but if done right you can increase your productivity and limit distractions. Working as a digital design nomad will allow you to expand your field of work, sometimes you might need

“It’s going to be hard to go back to commuting for hours in a metal box, next to thousands of other metal boxes to later position yourself in cubicle the size of a public toilet”

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to embark in projects that you normally wouldn’t consider but will help you grow.

Work doesn’t need to be done in a fixed schedule. This can even be more relevant to creative work, sometimes forcing yourself to strict working schedules can result in poor ideas, low quality work and frustration. As long as you can stick to a certain amount of working hours, you can choose your most productive times of the day and life your life according to that.

Commuting no longer becomes a daily problem. With this tedious part of the day eradicated it’s easier to start working earlier and saving countless wasted hours a year.Offices aren’t always the most productive workspace.

A study made by Mentalfloss discovered that 91% of remote workers report being more productive away from the office. The biggest problem with a busy office is that it contains a staggering amount of distractions, if you’re in a position where you can control your environment you can pinpoint these distractions and eliminate them.

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4Create a mouth-watering portfolio

This one goes hand in hand with the previous point. Have you been struggling

to get your website out or develop a portfolio that convinces clients? Wait till you have to do it in order to pursue your dream of hiking the Himalayas or taking up tango lessons in Spain. It’s easy to become complacent when you live comfortably. Comfortable is dangerous, it helps the mind go on to auto mode destroying productivity levels and aspirations.

In order to get new work you’ll need to create a portfolio that will make people look twice. As a digital design nomad you have to increase your online presence and display your best work, this should be a primary objective and a great amount of time should be dedicated to this.

One of the main disadvantages of being a digital design nomad is economic instability, there’s no guaranteed pay check at the end of the month. But this has is perks, it will keep you searching for clients, producing high quality work and learning more about your trade. Remote work will also affect the

way you form relationships with your boss or client, most of the time you’ll be solely judged on your work and not the outrageous colour of your new shirt.

Understanding cultural differences in order to keep clients happy and complete successful projects will give you rich knowledge and a portfolio with characteristics from diverse parts of the world.

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With new clients come new projects, new case studies and new possibilities. As a digital design nomad you might be working as a freelancer and will find that you’ll work on projects from start to finish, giving you creative freedom and ownership over projects that can later be displayed on your portfolio.

The Internet allows you to work with diverse cultures. Understanding cultural differences in order to keep clients happy and complete successful projects will give you rich knowledge and a portfolio with characteristics from diverse parts of the world.

Create great case studies whilst developing these projects, document the process and try to get client reviews when you finish. It will boost your portfolio and in turn show future clients that you’re capable of traveling and working at the same time.

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5Break away from the rat race

Once you’ve broken away from a traditional lifestyle you’ll become more aware

of your surroundings, opportunities and different ways of living that make you excel at what you’re good at. It’s kind of hard to break away from a routine whilst working 9-5.

With this routine it’s hard to focus on what’s important to you. Don’t get me wrong, you might have the best job in the world that allows you to grow in incredible ways, but there’s always going to be someone telling you what to do and how to do it.

If you live in a sedentary environment it’s easy to start following what others do. Getting a

car, fancy clothes and other material objects seems like a great idea, but in most cases this will only sink you deeper in to debt. All of a sudden it seems economically unwise to quit your job and start on your own when your debts are the size of an elephant on top of an oak tree.

Living like a digital design nomad requires entrepreneurship, it requires taking bold steps forward and always looking for opportunities. If you work as a freelancer you’ll be investing more time and effort in to your own business and building a brand. You’ll become your own boss and success will be completely up to you.

“If you work as a freelancer you’ll be investing more time and effort in to your own business and start building your own brand”

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6With change comes opportunity

The beauty of putting yourself in to unknown environments is that opportunities seem

to come out of thin air. These opportunities might not even come from your field of knowledge. I could see myself milking cows in Patagonia before completing some of the tasks that have crossed my path.

Traveling changes mind-sets, it makes you try new things, it helps break barriers and makes you jump in to the deep end. Even if that deep end is filled with hungry crocodiles.

Change is hard, it takes great courage to change your lifestyle when you’re comfortable. But when all you have to worry about is a backpack and a few dirty clothes it becomes easy to embrace new possibilities.

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7Finding your element

Yes I got the tittle from the book “The element” and it has everything to do with the

contents of it. It seems to me that most people seem to be stuck with one objective in mind, let’s make more money no matter what. The problem is that “no matter what” can easily turn in a completely wasted lifetime of perfecting the art of: Moving your computer’s mouse in your sleep so that your boss thinks you’re being productive. I don’t want to judge because this could be someone’s calling in life, but if you’re doing something just for getting by, you’re not living.

Moving around keeps you on your toes, it makes room for new opportunities. It creates a healthy

environment where you try new things. You have to become inventive and resolve challenges that you didn’t even know existed.

It’s easier to maneuver and change course if you eliminate most of the baggage. I mean this literally, your belongings as a digital design nomad will be quickly be reduced to a few backpacks. It’s far easier to change your direction and find what you love if you drive a bicycle instead of a war ship. A new location gives you a fresh opportunity to ditch what you find counterproductive in your life and build on things that give room for growth and happiness.

“It’s far easier to change your direction and find what you love if you drive a bicycle instead of a war ship.”

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8Meet inspiring specimens

Cross cultural experiences will undoubtedly push you to encounter people from

different cultural backgrounds. It will open your mind and allow you to engage with people with different points of view. After traveling for a while, I’ve met a selection of very interesting specimens. These specimens come from all walks of life and have challenged the “normal” lifestyle in ways that seem inconceivable. Every story motivates me to carry on moving forward, to find new adventures and to challenge what’s conventional.

I met a guy who owns a 10 meter boat called “Peter Pan” and has been sailing around the world with his cat. He trades Bob Marley songs and fish for fruit. This sounds completely insane, but he can do this in remote locations where computers are more complicated to find than Wally, so after a few musical transactions on to a phone, he’s finds his boat generously stocked up with a few groceries. He’s hunted wild pigs in Samoa, battled with life-threatening storms for over 10 hours and even drowned a deer being chased by an aborigine in a river somewhere in Papua.

He committed his life to what he loves, the sea, and by doing this he’s collected an amazing array of stories.

“I met a guy who owns a 10 meter boat called “Peter Pan” and has been sailing around the world with his cat. He trades Bob Marley songs and fish for fruit”

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Another very interesting character is a German friend I met in Kuta, Lombok. He’s been traveling for 14 months and funding his trip with his number one passion: poker. He’s an avid player that sees poker as his job. It allows him to change location constantly, experience different cultures and explore casinos all over the globe. He can earn enough to learn new hobbies and move wherever he wants to.

A Colombian/Peruvian girl I met in the Malaysian jungle has been traveling for over a year by working for a few medical companies in the USA. Her objective: explore the globe. She found a job that would allow her to do this and has now

seen more countries than the vast majority of humans. She would wake up in the morning, get down to work and would then have the rest of the day to explore.

The list is endless, but you can see the trend here, these people do what they love and manage to travel at the same time. They are pretty outstanding, but in the end they are normal people like you and me, the difference is that they’ve chosen to challenge “the normal lifestyle” and put themselves out there. This is eye opening and deeply inspiring.

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9Creativity and inspiration

It’s easy to lose inspiration, some days it seems like it was killed slowly by the not so inspiring

words of an angry client. This happens to every designer on the face of the earth. The problem arises when Mr Inspiration doesn’t want to come out and play for over a month. And he might be hiding due to the fact that he doesn’t really like the environment you reside in.

As a digital design nomad it’s easy to boost your creativity and inspiration. Changing your environment and looking at the world from different angles will nurture your creative soul and inspire you. Learning how to climb a palm tree, hiking a volcano, or diving in a sea full of jelly fish will undoubtedly open your mind to

new realities and spark different synapses in the brain. These realities will spark brilliance, new ideas and ways of resolving problems. It’s pretty simple: The more you do, the more knowledgeable you’ll become and the more brilliant ideas you’ll have.

A very interesting paper written by William W. Maddux, Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky came to the following conclusion: “Overall, multicultural learning appears to be an important mechanism by which foreign living experiences lead to creative enhancement.” In short, individuals that had travelled more performed better at different creative tasks than those that hadn’t.

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10Help others

One of the biggest problems charities have is transmitting what’s

happening thousands of miles away from the people that have resources that could potentially save lives. When you move around the globe, no-matter how you do it, you’ll be closer to different people’s realities.

You can appreciate the lack of sanitary services for the local population in a remote village, the excess of rubbish in a resort, the harsh working conditions kids have to endure or animal abuse.

When you’re closer you care more because you live these experiences first hand. If you can connect to

your environment you can help change realities for different people and ecosystems.

At Start Loaded we’re convinced that being close to communities can help us understand the specific needs people have around the world.

Our premise is simple, we believe knowledge should not be limited to a few privileged people and will do everything in our power to share it. It’s our duty to give something back to the amazing communities that welcome us around the world. One of our ways to say thank you is by personally giving a book to a child in need for every course we sell.

“Our premise is simple, we believe knowledge should not be limited to a few privileged people and will do everything in our power to share it”

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ConclusionKnowledge and growth

This is a combination of all of the above. If done right, this lifestyle will allow you

to grow quicker than the magic bean plant. You’ll be able to get first hand contact with the history of a country and help you grasp how it’s been shaped. Traveling will allow you to dip your toes in to new languages and hopefully allow you to say more than hello and thank you. I recently met a guy who had to learn to communicate in Indonesian in 4 weeks because he lived in a village where he had nothing to do but talk to the locals; who knew as much English as I know Indonesian. I still haven’t found a language course that can achieve the same results.

Being a digital design nomad is a big challenge, it pushes you to the limit of what you think capable of achieving. Invoicing, budgeting, marketing, business, programming and helping my new neighbor kill a chicken are all things that I had to learn or develop in order to keep my lifestyle. Learning in order to survive can help you achieve things you though were out of reach.

A big problem you’ll encounter as a digital design nomad is that you’ll find it hard to create a solid social circle. This can be daunting, especially if you’re

“I recently met a guy who had to learn to communicate in Indonesian in 4 weeks because he lived in a village where he had nothing to do but talk to the locals”

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traveling alone, so inevitably you’ll have to put yourself out there (even if this means joining a hard-core motorbike crew that only listens to Justin Bieber). You’ll be constantly meeting new people; these new people bring in a rich mix of ingredients that can teach you new skills, ways of surviving, beliefs, political views and a fresh perspective of life.

Freedom is hard to achieve, but if we go by what it says in the dictionary, we can conclude that becoming a nomad can get you closer to what we consider freedom. This freedom will allow you to act, speak, create, learn and move in your own way. It’s easy to focus on things that we love and this lifestyle can allow you to do that. If your calling is to suck eggs better than your grandmother, we can guarantee you’ll be able to achieve it by becoming a digital design nomad.

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Thank you for reading this eBook

If you’d like to see more material made specifically for digital design nomads we have assets, courses and the latest news from

the nomadic world on our website:

www.startloaded.com

Feel free to share this template, you can also find us on the following platforms:

[email protected]


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